


sticks and stones

by orphan_account



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Hurt/Comfort, Opiod Addiction, Withdrawal, im gonna tag that because Klaus.. DOES throw himself into some painful situations on purpose, self injury, so it might be triggering to some
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 02:48:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18401594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Inspired by tumblr user thequeenofthepirate 's idea:So, when the UA were kids, Diego mentioned Klaus broke his jaw and had to have it wired shut for eight weeks. Well, what if the copious amounts of morphine given for the surgery to pin and wire his jaw shut was the first time he realized drugs make the ghosts disappear? What if the vicodin prescribed for lasting pain the few months after unwiring cemented his building addiction? What if it was all an accident, and Grace was his first unknowing supplier?





	1. One

“Alright. All you have to do is jump and break a leg. Or an arm, it doesn’t really matter.” Klaus chuckled to himself then gulped, looking over the edge of the landing to the floor below in the main hall and trying not to psych himself out. 

 

He took a tumbling leap and flailed for a moment mid-air, immediately regretting his decision as fear found a place deep in his gut. 

 

Then he was plummeting to the hardwood floors below, a yelp prying its way out of his lips. He hit the floor with a dull  _ thud  _ and felt something in his forearm snap instantly. It was a slow descent into pain- a dull roaring in his ears that slowly grew as his brain took into account what had happened. The slam of impact had knocked something loose, and it was taking longer than usual for Klaus to get himself collected. 

 

He tucked his legs underneath him delicately and cradled his arm, rocking slightly on the ground and waiting for someone to come find him. The pain wasn’t what he was worried about; after all, he’d succeeded. There was no way Grace wouldn’t give him something now. 

 

His arm wasn’t exactly pointing in an awkward angle- it was more just slightly off putting. Something definitely wasn’t right, but Klaus didn’t want to be the one to press his arm and find out what. Besides, he wasn’t a doctor, and he had already done all he needed to. Pogo could probably take care of the rest.  _ Probably _ , the anxious side of him echoed. It would be fine.

 

The pain came to a head suddenly, rushing forth and pushing a gasp out of him. His arm was throbbing like fire, and he let out a low groan involuntarily. Slices of white-hot fire ran across the entirety of his right arm, and he found himself deliriously glad that he was left-handed. Small mercies, right? 

 

His head met the ground with another dull thud, and Klaus was uncomfortably unconscious when Grace found him during her daily duties. 

 

-

 

Klaus woke up with a start, body jumping forward only to be stopped by a strong pair of hands. He struggled even before opening his eyes- restraints of any kind weren’t really his thing (ha). Once he mustered the courage to let the light into his pupils he realized it was just Luther, holding him down with loosely-masked concern. 

 

The rest of his surroundings slowly came into view, and Klaus saw that both Ben and Diego were present as well. They seemed to be exhausted; He wondered if they’d been waiting for him to wake up, then backtracked and wondered just how  _ long  _ he’d been out. 

 

He’d made the leap just around when most of the others would have been eating breakfast, so the hallways had been clear as per his plans. But it was morning again, and surely it hadn’t been quick to fix whatever he’d fucked up in his arm.

 

“Hey Ben,” Klaus smiled, and realized sleepily that he was definitely high. There was no pain at all exuding from the cast to the right of him, and his voice was slurring like it did when he and Five got into dad’s liquor. 

 

Ben gave him a pained smile and waved in return, preferring to stay quiet even on a good day. Hell, with Klaus unconscious for so long he was probably ecstatic. Diego shuffled from his perch on an armrest and cleared his throat, looking startled when it made the room go quiet- or at least, more quiet than it had been before. 

 

“Uh… Hi Klaus. D-dad wanted Luther to keep an eye on you, so I t-thought I’d keep you company as well. Because I was bored. And. And there’s no big missions today, thankfully. I think you’d be benched anyways,” Diego smiled resolutely. Luther nodded in agreement at his brother’s statement, and suddenly everyone was turning to look at Klaus. 

 

“Oh, you want  _ me  _ to talk. Alright, well… thank you for waiting for me to wake up and all… Right, how long was I out?” 

 

“Just a day, apparently you’ve fractured your forearm in a weird place that required more of Dad’s attention than usual,” Ben said, and seemed shocked when the last of his statement sounded achingly bitter. Klaus couldn’t blame him- the poor boy looked up to Luther and their father more than almost everyone else, and his constant attempts to please them were always in vain. He couldn’t imagine living a life where his sole purpose was to please others. 

 

“Jesus christ, Number Four, what the fuck are you talking about?” Five’s voice cuts through the silence, or at least what Klaus had taken to be a silence. He quickly realized that he had voiced his last thought aloud, and thanked the stars that there hadn’t been the rest of it. Ben was too precious to the lot of them to ever hurt like that- no matter how painfully obvious his weaknesses were to the rest of them. 

 

“Huh? What did I say?” Klaus played dumb to avoid the subject, and his smartest brother took it to mean what it was- just the morphine high talking. 

 

“Nevermind, dumbass. Anyway, Dad sent me to check up on you because he knows I’m the only one around here with any  _ competence  _ for the sort of thing-” He stopped mid-sentence to sneer at Luther, who had decided resolutely to stare at the wall and ignore everything and anything Five was saying, “- and I wanted to see if you were feeling alright. Any pain, any discomfort? Your dosage is still fairly low, but it hasn’t been long since your damn jaw healed and you might have built a tolerance to the shit, so I can probably give you more as long as it’s not too concentrated…” 

 

Five trailed off and began counting numbers in his head, occasionally letting one slip through his guards and out into the open. It made no sense to the rest of them, which was probably for the best. After a few minutes of mania from Five, Klaus spoke up. 

 

“Yeah, I think there’s still actually quite a bit of pain. Dunno why, though.” It was a lie, through and through. Klaus was already swimming through the high- his mind was slow and sappy, thoughts seeping in like warm honey and bothering absolutely no one, not even the ghosts locked away inside him. 

 

“Okay, great. Not great in the sense that you’re in pain, of course, just that- shit, forget it.” Five waved his hands like a conductor for effect, then walked over to the machine Klaus suddenly realized he was hooked up to and pressed a few buttons, covering the panel with his blazer so that it was out of sight from the rest of the group. 

 

Klaus saw that Ben nearly said something. To number six, it was probably all too obvious what he was doing. He had been the one to take Klaus out of panic attacks after the mausoleum, the one to hear him scream through his nightmares and watch him pretend it was fine in the morning. Ben opened his mouth, then saw Five head to the machine, and Klaus’ thankful expression, and he stopped. The words he had been going to say caught in his throat, quieting with a sense of desperation and soft acceptance. 

 

In the future, Ben would regret it with a cold, bitter vengeance. But he let Five up the dosage, and he let his brother slip away. 


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus remembers the past.

Klaus barely registered the rest of his family leaving after that. A part of him broke away, relishing the drugs pumping into his system. More than anything, he was glad that this meant that he was left alone. Not in the physical sense; his siblings still pestered and poked and teased him, despite his orders of being bedridden for the day. It was the beautiful absence of ghosts that made him reach a hand up to the sky and grab at the sunlight with shaking fingers- the lack of ghouls that made a smile break across his face and warmth enter his cold, broken heart for the first time in years. 

He hadn’t always felt this way about his powers. Klaus didn’t like to put the blame on others- not seriously, at least- but there was no denying that it mostly had to do with his father and his… methods. 

 

Methods was a pretty word, considering the nightmares they caused, the scratches scarring his body that were placed there of his own accord, the ugly crying in the depth of the night when he thought nobody could hear. 

 

Like the scientist he was, his father didn’t care for his tests subjects. It was all a game; One big experiment. When he found Klaus shuddering after a mission, refusing to go to training the next day, there was only one clear response- something that he had been thinking about for a very long time. 

 

The mausoleum was so much more than a place where dead people snarled and paced. A smell of decaying flesh permeated every crevice of the cold, unyielding stone that Klaus could flinch away from. His voice echoed in there, amplified by the walls and pushed back on him like a force meant to hurt. Maybe hearing his own unanswered cries told tenfold  _ was  _ a form of hurt, one that he just didn’t like to think about. 

 

It was achingly dark, too. Klaus wasn’t a baby, despite what Diego liked to tease. He wasn’t afraid of the dark- or at least, he hadn’t been until his first night in the mausoleum. The word itself almost deserved a title in his mind.  _ The Mausoleum _ . It seemed much more fitting, a manifestation of his trauma packed into neat, clean-cut syllables. 

 

His first experience in there started off as a joke. A part of him had wanted to laugh mockingly, but the stench kept him quiet. He intended to inhale as little of the air in there as humanly possible, thank you very much. It was just another punishment, like how Allison was gagged when she laughed a little too loud, or how Diego was told to read speeches when his aim was off. However humiliating it was, Klaus would handle it. 

 

Then the voices started. 

 

This, too, wasn’t especially jarring. The dark didn’t help, but the quiet pleading of the ghouls around him were only unnerving at best. After all, he was used to the white noise of forgotten people. 

 

_ “Klaus,”  _ one of them groaned. And okay, that… was new. No one ever knew his name, not unless he made the choice to tell them. 

 

“ _ Klaus, help us,”  _ another chimed in. It made his hackles raise- they weren’t supposed to call him out, he was simply a spectator. When they asked him for help… No, he couldn’t do anything about it, and it didn’t matter how hard he tried. There was no way he’d be able to help them, regardless of what they wanted. Klaus told himself that as the groans slowly grew into a cacophony of shrieks. 

 

It was probably the constant disarray of noise that got to him, in the end. No matter how hard he clenched his palms over his ears, the screams in his head continued relentlessly. The ink covering his eyes was no ally; the glowing forms of the ghosts shone through the dark, reflecting off the mossy mausoleum and creating a desolate hellscape he had no hopes of getting out of. 

 

Klaus was ashamed to admit that his screams joined theirs not too long after. His pleads were met with anger and disgust; his insistence that he couldn’t help was met with agonizing banshee cries and incredulous glares. It took minutes for him to curl into a ball and cry himself hoarse. When his father pulled him out, he felt years older. The walk back to his room was silent- had it been anything more, Klaus probably would have started to cry again. His dad fixed him with a cold, emotionless gaze. It’s intensity could have brought about flinches, had Klaus been more alive. Instead, he stared back, eyes unseeing and expression blank. 

 

“Always disappointing, Number Four,” Reginald muttered, and allowed Klaus to enter his room. The soft thumps of his father’s footsteps trailing away to his study meant that the boy could relax; He slumped with a broken sigh and lay on his bed, back resting against the wall. For a moment, his position stuck, and Klaus wanted more than anything to just drift away and never have to look at anyone or anything again. 

 

He realized with a start that tears were running down his cheeks silently. It took him a while to wipe them away.

 

His walls were littered with the phrases of the dead. When he was tired, or anxious, or overthinking, he wrote out what they said to separate himself from their ideas. Klaus grabbed a marker and got to work.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically Klaus figuring out what Vicodin does for him. I'm honestly so lazy when it comes to summaries just lmk if you have questions

“Vanya! Hey Van, check me out- woaaah-” Klaus’ sentence was cut short as the too-small heels on his feet caught on one of the stairs in the main foyer, and his arms flailed wildly as his body tipped forward precariously. 

 

“Klaus, be careful!” Allison’s screech was moments too late, and she watched in horror as her brother toppled down the stairs in a child’s rendition of what could be described as a drag outfit. Her shoulders lifted in an involuntary cringe at the loud  _ crack  _ that resounded through the room as he hit the floor. 

 

Luther appeared next to Allison seconds later, no doubt alarmed by her outburst, and let out an equally noteworthy cringe. Klaus processed what happened, then let out a hollow cry of pain. His jaw was hanging loose from his upper mouth- most likely in an effort to keep the broken bone from being jarred. Already, the left side of his cheek was starting to swell. It looked bad, and the commotion sent Grace and Pogo running to the source of the noises. 

 

“Klaus, what ever have you done to yourself now?” Grace’s polite, loving tone cut through Klaus’ moaning, and he tried to tell her what happened. When his teeth came together to pronounce even the first part of a word, however, agony shot through his jaw, trailing down towards his neck and making his eyes water. He tried futilely to hide himself from his siblings as they gathered, despite the fact that they were all just concerned for him. 

 

“Don’t worry, dear, your father will fix you right up, won’t he? Come along.” Their pseudo-mother’s calm behavior was like a tonic to their worry, and as she took Klaus’ hand and led him towards Reginald’s study, the other six found themselves able to breathe again without thoughts about their wayward brother plaguing them too harshly. 

 

“ _ You goofed up this time, bud, _ ” one of the frequent ghosts of the academy sneered. Klaus couldn’t muster the energy to tell him to shut up, so instead he averted his eyes and tried not to cry through the pain. 

 

His father eyed his outfit with his usual presumptuous disdain; If there was some more disappointment in there than usual, Klaus couldn’t bring himself to care. He pretended it didn’t sting - and of course, emotional on  _ top  _ of the physical pain, didn’t that just take the cake - and let his father lead him to the surgical room where most of their accidents were made better again. 

 

“Pogo, fasten the restraints. Grace, calculate the anesthetic required for the operation. Snap to it, I don’t have all day. I was in the middle of a rather interesting book,” Reginald huffed, watching as Grace hooked a needle to Klaus’ arm and turned a dial on a contraption the child couldn’t even begin to comprehend. 

 

“Klaus,” Grace began, then looked cautiously at Reginald and restarted, “Number Four, if you’ll just count down from ten for me? In your head, not out loud, of course.” 

 

Klaus nodded numbly, then started the countdown silently. 

 

_ Ten… Nine….… Eight………... Seven ……………….. . . . .   . . . . ___________ _

 

Nobody ever called Klaus undetermined. Well, okay, that wasn’t true. Maybe he should start over. Nobody ever called Klaus  _ naturally  _ undetermined. It was entirely self-made; He jokingly took pride in the fact. 

 

That being said (ironic, huh?), the first thing that Klaus tried to do when he woke up was speak. Considering his jaw was wired shut, it was an instant fail. One that thankfully, nobody else was present for. The effort of trying and falling short of making noises came with a side effect- terrible pain in the mouth. For a good few minutes Klaus seriously considered getting a meat cleaver from Grace’s kitchen and just removing the entire lower half of his face, but he quickly realized that that probably wouldn’t be too effective in the long run. Close call. 

 

However, the ache in his jaw ebbed a lot faster than Klaus figured it would’ve normally. That in itself was nice- less things to worry about, he supposed, although his forced silence was not as pleasant. He didn’t like not being able to talk; It meant people could take things away from him, put words in his mouth when he had meant something else entirely. Most of his siblings thought he was  _ too  _ talkative, and that was fine. Klaus knew that their annoyance wasn’t worth his anxiety.

 

And anxiety he did have. The combination of barely being able to move his jaw and his stolen voice were packing a punch. Something about the world seemed slowed; his panic was diluted, kept in a box as if he was watching another person freak out. Even the room seemed hazy. Now that he was paying closer attention, he noticed the corners of his vision were blurred and soft, like how tears clog his eyes when he’s cold at night-

 

He turned his focus on his arms, flinching lightly as he took into account the needle pressed into his vein. It was attached to a machine still, one that was probably making him feel like this. 

The drugs weren’t entirely pleasant. Of course, he wasn’t in the best mental state to begin with, but he was sure that whatever he was on didn’t help. After cataloging this, time skidded to a halt, and he passed out again. 

 

Waking up for the second time in one day was jarring, to say the least, if not completely unpleasant. He huffed a close-mouthed sigh of relief through his nose, realizing that this time, he was just lying in bed. The restraints around his wrists were gone, and the warm light of sunset was filtering in through the window of his room. 

 

“You were only out for a few hours, but Grace said that the morphine probably had a greater effect on you that most people. I wouldn’t worry about it, she’s given you two vicodin for when it wears off.” Ben’s voice startles Klaus, and he jumps up to a sitting position. He tries to speak, but quickly remembers that that’s not actually an option at the moment, and sits back with another huff. 

 

“Here, it’s fine. I brought you a notepad and a pen for the time being, we can figure something out later too,” Ben laughed, obviously seeing the dejected look on his brother’s face. Klaus smiled silently and took the pad, nodding in what he hoped would be taken as gratitude. 

_ It kinda sucks not being able to talk _ , he writes, hand moving sluggishly across the page. The words looked like mere scribbles on the paper, and so he furrowed his eyebrows and attempted it again. This time, he makes a conscious effort to steady his wrist, and what he’s trying to say is recognizable. Who would’ve thought that being drugged up affected your hand-eye coordination?

 

Ben read it and then looked at him sympathetically, to which Klaus rolled his eyes and reached for the pen again. 

_ ill manage dont worry about it. plus at least ive shut up now!!  _ He makes to grin, but the stuff obstructing his jaw gets in the way and it ends up looking like a grimace. Ben joins him in it, and then tells him that he’ll be back. Klaus blinks, and his brother is already gone. 

 

He gets used to time being slowed or sped up unusually within the next few days. One of the side effects of vicodin, Five had told him, was feeling slightly sleepy or nauseous. Klaus hadn’t expected them to feel so  _ great _ , though. It was like all of his emotions had been bottled up and placed on a shelf in another room in another house, far away from where he’d ever step foot. 

 

With the adjustment to the drugs and not being able to speak, Klaus had been distracted from his studies. Which is why, when his father demanded he rejoin the other five, the boy had protested. He was out of practice, not to mention still chronically fatigued. Reginald didn’t care, but he was never a fan of disobedience.

 

Before Klaus could register what was going on, he was being pulled by his wrist to the Mausoleum. Immediately he began to struggle. It was somehow more difficult when he couldn’t talk- the only things escaping his lips were muffled groans and gargled screams, inhibited by metal and cruelty. He latched eyes with Grace as his father dragged him to his place of punishment, and pleaded with her silhouette, standing emotionlessly in the doorway to the academy. She regarded him with a broken look and turned away, walking out of sight. 

 

There was no point in keeping track of how long Klaus had been out of the Mausoleum before he was put in again, because no matter how hard he tried to count the seconds, minutes, hours…  _ days  _ he was in there, he always lost the numbers. It was always too much, and there was nothing he could do to reassure himself that it wouldn’t happen again. It would happen again. 

 

Rot, as was typical, met his senses first. The scent never got less pungent, and with the overstimulation of being on painkillers, tears began to well up in his eyes instantly. Klaus let out a guttural cry and tried to crawl back towards the entrance of the Mausoleum before the stone doors were shut- he barely made it a foot before collapsing as they slammed closed. 

 

He lay in wait for the voices to come. Every time he entered, it got monumentally worse. Ghosts don’t forget, and they hold grudges. Their judgement was harsh and scathing every time 

 

Minutes past, with Klaus slowly growing colder as the icey stone below him sapped the heat from his skin. The longer he had to wait, the more confused he became. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful, but there was no way the ghosts could have just disappeared. Things don’t work like that- and he should know.

 

Time was impossible to track in the Mausoleum, but after a few hours Klaus lowered his defenses. There would be no hauntings tonight, and he had credited that to the only thing he logically could’ve; The drugs. 

 

To test his hypothesis, Klaus worked to find something. Normally he’d rather take one of Diego’s knives to the ass than disturb the peace anywhere near the graveyard, but the thought of a confirmation- of being  _ certain  _ that he had a way out? It was too good to be true, and too enticing to pass up.

  
  


When the stone slabs opened and light poured into the Mausoleum, Klaus was collected. He had the upper hand now. Sure, the experience itself was still unpleasant, bone-achingly cold, and nauseating. But… he had the way out. That thought was enough to put a smile on his silent lips. 

 

Of course, his father didn’t like to see him smile. 

**Author's Note:**

> please make sure to let me know if you see any spelling/grammar errors!! Also lemme know how you like it so far


End file.
